Get ready for Gio Ponti season

In the next few months, Milan's ADI Design Museum will announce the opening date for its new Spazio Gio Ponti, a 700 sqm steel-and-wood mezzanine dedicated to work and writings by the architect and designer, curated by historian Fulvio Irace. While workers put the finishing touches to the structure by architect Maurizio Milan and interior space by Matteo Vercelloni, a new exhibition at Donzella in New York (see below) explores Ponti's creative vision — as popular and relevant now as when he began his career a century ago. All this as Molteni&C releases a collection of small, sculptural objects Ponti designed over 60 years.

Architect not only of iconic buildings like Milan's Pirelli Tower, Ponti was also the founding father of a second Italian renaissance. For those who wish to explore his work further, there are umpteen opportunities across Europe and beyond. We've rounded up six of the best.

Gio Ponti: Designing Optimism, at Donzella, New York

Specialising in postwar Italian design, Paul Donzella's gallery was made for a show like Designing Optimism — and co-curator Brian Kish is the definitive scholar to explore the designer's joyful world view. Kish and Donzella have sourced 80-some pieces in wood, silver, enamelled metal and ceramic for the job, including the lounge chairs above, created for the Parco Dei Principe hotels. Architectural drawings and letters round out the story of Ponti's elegant vision and continued relevance. It's on through December 22.

Taschen's Gio Ponti monograph

The cover details a marble composite floor pattern designed by Ponti and featured in a 1957 edition of his magazine Domus. The content tracks his six-decade career, with essays, paeans and all 136 projects catalogued and pictured. You can find it in regular and XL versions at Taschen stores or online.

Villa Ponti Bellavista, Civenna, Italy

Ponti's influence on this midcentury Lake Como retreat is obvious. The ocean liner vibe of the main entertaining rooms are true to his MO. But the caretakers of Villa Ponti Bellavista are still investigating whether he oversaw the design himself — the original sketch was signed by two acolytes from the designer's Milan studio. Regardless, the home is a worthy rental: a 1960s time capsule on three secluded acres of Como lakefront. It gets sunlight all day, and the main bedrooms look out over the swimming pool to Alpine views.

Concattedrale Gran Madre di Dio, Taranto, Italy

Taranto doesn't make it into many Apuglian itineraries, and yet Ponti's ethereal co-cathedral, completed in 1970, might be the most riveting sight on Italy's heel. It's certainly the most unusual. Inspired by the region's nautical history, Ponti gave it a 40-metre white concrete ‘sail’, perforated like cut paper, in place of a belfry. The entire building is wrapped in this Neo-gothic ‘openwork’, leading in through bronze doors to a vaulted interior and 11-metre dome that is life-changing to experience. Green accents tie into the reflecting pools outside.

Italian Gardens Café, London

In Kensington Gardens, brunch is taken on Ponti's Leggera chairs, designed for Cassina in 1952. The expertly joined tapered-wood seating complements the café's tongue-and-groove wall panelling. Pivoted to overlook the Kensington Gardens fountains, you could sit all day over lattes and a fig and prosciutto ricotta toast.

Parco dei Principi, Sorrento

‘Blue are the blankets, the headboards, the doors: white the rest,’ said Gio Ponti after designing this hotel on Italy's Amalfi Coast in the early 1960s — designing everything but the view, he liked to add. Ponti's blue-upholstered armchairs, stools, headboards and Leggera chairs coordinate with blue formica panels on the woodwork, and his pebble inlays have become a defining feature of the space. Still, the most remarkable gesture was to design 30 original ceramic tile motifs, so that each of the guest rooms had — and still have — an original floor. He even designed the pool, in the shape of a lake with ‘islands’ to swim around.

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